A Little Walk With God

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Do you really want to test your faith? Do you really want to know if what you’ve found in Christ is real and can stand up to the test of the world and the ridicule of those you ran around with as an enemy of God and His kingdom? Then live Christ in front of your family. Day in and day out live the life God wants you to live. Share what God puts on your mind. Do the tasks He calls you to do. Love the way He wants you to love within your family.

When you live your life in front of your family, they know if you are real. You can’t put on a façade in front of them, at least not very long. They know your past. They know your habits. They know the things you’ve started and quit. They know the resolutions you’ve made through the years and failed in keeping. They know the buttons to push to get you riled up and send your emotions flaring. Your family knows you better than anyone else.

Read it in a year - Psalms 87-89

see the whole year's plan here

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

So why did Mark point out this small detail? This point about Jesus going to heal a 12-year-old girl? Children were the throw-aways of society, then and now. If you were going to discard someone, it would be one of those two groups. Second, the child was a she, not a he. Women held little or no standing in the societies of Jesus’ day. The feminist movement was unheard of. Today’s Shariah laws concerning women would have been considered left-wing liberalism in those days. Women had no rights. Life was harsh. Third, with all these cultural things weighing against any hope for this young life, we see that if no one else does, Jesus cares. He goes out of His way to meet the need of this young lady and her family, even to the point of reminding them that after not eating for the time she lay in state while the professional mourners wailed by her side, she would be hungry. Her parents should hurry and fix her something to eat.

What’s the point? If Jesus cares about such an insignificant person in the society of His day, certainly, He also cares about you. He will help you when you call on Him.

Read it in a year - 2 Kings 16-20

see the whole year's plan here

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

That’s important to this story. It tells me that God knows what I’m doing when no one else does. It tells me my prayers and my desires and my hurts and my questions are not lost in the cacophony of the crowd around me. Even in the noise of the world that seems to drown out my voice to others, God hears. The world may not care about what happens to me and in fact, might press me down in their rush to move along the street of life, but God cares. He won’t let me get lost in the crowd. He knows my touch among the throng of people that crowd around and might try to still my voice.

That’s one of the things I like most about this story. God hears me, even when others don’t. He listens, even when others try to crowd me out. He responds to my touch, even though it is so brief and so gentle that most would never notice a touch has been made. The story tells me God really cares about us individually. He picks us out of the crowd and meets us where we are and meets our specific individual need, not what the roar of the crowd suggests.

Read it in a year - Leviticus 19-21

see the whole year's plan here

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

“I want you to go back home to your own people.” The newly freed man didn’t expect that. He probably didn’t want it, either. Like most of us, the man probably wanted to accompany Jesus on His mission journey through the other towns of Galilee and Judea spreading the good news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But that wasn’t the mission Jesus gave him. Jesus told him to go home and talk to his family. The people that knew him best.

The man freed from his demon possession would have a tough time ahead. Jesus wanted him to witness to those who knew him best. He was to show the change in him. He was to share the message and not just talk about it, but live it every day in front of those who knew him best. This changed man was to prove himself to those who did not trust him, those who threw him into the street and chained him up in the cemeteries because he had been a danger to the community. His task would be his toughest assignment. But that’s sometimes what Jesus calls us to do. Live the life He calls us to, just where we are, the toughest place to live.

Read it in a year - 1 Thessalonians 1-3

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A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Jesus commands the demon to come out of the man. And the demon replies, “…In the name of God, I beg you…” Did you notice that? The demons serve Satan. They devote their lives to the powers of darkness. That give their all to the enemy of God. They do everything they can to thwart the plans God has for His kingdom and our salvation. They want to capture our soul and turn us to wickedness and away from God and His holiness. These demons want to lead us on the world’s path toward eternal destruction and join them in Satan’s hell.

Yet, when Jesus confronts these demons with the command to leave this tortured man, the demons cry out, “In the name of God…” They know where the real power lies. They understand their boss, Satan has no real authority. He has no real power. He cannot defeat the creator of the universe. His strength cannot match that of the Almighty’s. He knows it and he is very afraid when Jesus comes near.

The demon expects great pain, severe punishment because of who he is and what he’s done when Jesus comes near. The demon is now in the presence of God and expects judgment when he encounters His Son in the flesh. He assumes his eternal punishment will begin right then since Jesus has come from heaven and touched His feet to this planet. The demon assumes time has ended for him. “I beg you - don’t torture me.”

Read it in a year - Luke 23-24

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A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

We fear the things we cannot control. Whether it is terrorism, cancer, heart attacks, communicable diseases, storms, we fear these things we cannot control. That’s what was happening with these seasoned sailors. They got caught in the middle of a storm that rose up on the Sea of Galillee while transporting Jesus from one shore to the other. The winds came out of the north whipping up the waves and producing the kind of violent storms that sometimes plagued the area.

They didn’t expect it. They didn’t think the storm would come in like it did. They knew how to read the weather and this storm wasn’t predicted. But it came just the same. And they couldn’t control its effects on their small vessel. If it continued, the vessel would surely sink. They were afraid. But Jesus was with them. And that makes all the difference in the world.

He controls things we cannot. He controls the results of the storm. In fact, He should the disciples and those in all those other boats that traveled with them that He controlled the storm itself. With just a word the winds stopped, the waves calmed, the rain ceased. The storm obeyed His voice.

Read it in a year - Ezekiel 37-42

see the whole year's plan here

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Like the mustard seed that grows into a bush the size of a tree where birds build their nests or like that single candle used to light others that finally engulf the whole room with light, when we share God’s mercy and grace and love with those around us, something happens. His spirit works to spread that fire not only in us, but into those with whom we share. His spirit is always at work. He leads us to people who are ready to hear His word if we will listen to His guiding voice and share when He tells us to. He knows when the time is perfect.

Will we see the results of our labor? Maybe, maybe not. It’s not our responsibility to save people from their sins. We can’t do that. We can’t even win them to the kingdom. Not within our power. But what we can do is tell others what He has done and is doing in our lives. We can act as His witnesses and tell them about Jesus and the good news of His kingdom right here for those willing to give themselves to Him. God does all the rest.

You might feel like one candle in the darkness sometimes. But remember that single candle begins to lighten the whole room. That event or service or memorial you remember with all those candles lit and providing light in that auditorium started with one candle touching another. Are you willing to be that candle in a dark world?

Read it in a year - Proverbs 11-12

see the whole year's plan here

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

When we are part of His kingdom building and do our small part, the simple tasks He asks us to do, He does the rest and we don’t need to know how He does it. If we will sow seeds of kindness, He can use them to grow His grace in the hearts of those who receive it. If we sow His love, He multiplies it and it spreads not just to the ones we love, but well beyond them to touch many who see and hear of that love through the stories of those we touch. If we share the story of Jesus, God’s spirit helps it mature in fertile ground.

We don’t need to worry and fret about what happens to the gifts we share with others, prophecy, teaching, healing, hospitality, or any number of other gifts. When we share them, God uses them the way He sees fit and they spread His love and mercy and grace into the hearts and lives of others. Isaiah records God’s message to us: So it is when I declare something. My word will go out and not return to Me empty, But it will do what I wanted; it will accomplish what I determined.

God just expects us to carry out the simple tasks He gives us to do. They’re not always easy, but they’re usually simple to understand. When we do, He does the rest.

Read it in a year - Psalms 84-86

see the whole year's plan here

A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Before you can multiple, you need to know how to add. Before you can do algebra, you need to have multiplication mastered. Before you tackle calculus, algebra, trigonometry, and geometry should be in your repertoire. And as you begin to master each of those skills, new horizons of learning open up for you so that you can solve problems with ever increasing difficulty that as a grade schooler learning to add, you would never have a clue how to begin to solve if your life depended on it.

That’s the way it is with spiritual things. Too many times, people think they should be able to open the Bible and know all the answers about life by reading the book. It doesn’t work that way. We forget that regardless of our physical age, when we are born again, by the Spirit of God, we are spiritual infants. We know just enough about spiritual things to have our sins forgiven and begin to follow God’s leading.

As we continue to read His word, pray about it, follow the teaching He gives us, we begin to learn more each day. We figure out what it really means to let Jesus be Lord of our life. But we can’t learn that until after we’ve had our sins forgiven and committed ourselves to Him. Only then do we begin to gain the additional knowledge about His guidance and leadership in our life, because until then, it’s like that second grader reading a calculus book.

Read it in a year - 2 Kings 11-15

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A daily devotional through the recorded words Jesus spoke while He walked alongside us. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Do you play hide-and-seek as a kid? I think it’s a popular game for most kids in almost every society. And I think we can get pretty good at it the older we get. As toddlers, we think that covering our eyes so that we can’t see anyone else means they can’t see us, but as we mature, we learn to hide in closets, find spaces in the cabinets, discover those hidden holes behind boxes in the garage. We find all kinds of places that others forget to look in and can stay hidden for a long time before anyone finds us. We can get pretty good at hiding.

Christians have become invisible. We look and sound like everyone else. Co-workers are surprised at the announcement of our faith. Neighbors are shocked if we suddenly say we won’t do something because we say we are Christian. They look at our behavior, our speech, our lifestyle and ask, “So what’s different about you?” What do we answer? What is different about us? How do people know that we are Christian? Can they see God’s light shining through us without us telling them?

Read it in a year - Leviticus 16-18

see the whole year's plan here